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An anonymous reader writes "I have been working on an HTML5 app for Panasonic VIERA TVs, specifically a client for the Plex Media Server. After paying $129 for the developer program, version 1.0 was submitted for inclusion in their VIERA Connect marketplace several weeks ago. After a few requested tweaks, they inquired about how the client communicated with the Plex Server. As many/most web developers do, I used jQuery and its $.ajax call (which is just a wrapper for XMLHttpRequest()). They insisted this was not standard Javascript, and after several communications with them, they replied back with "A workaround like this is considered a hack.". I'm stunned that anyone familiar with HTML would consider jQuery a hack. I've been patient in attempting to explain how jQuery works, but I am getting nowhere. Any thoughts on how I can better explain jQuery to an app reviewer? Yes, I know I can write my app without any Javascript library, but I am really hoping avoid that."

They don't say that jQuery is a hack. They say that using features like XMLHttpRequest directly (or via a 3rd party library) and not using the Panasonic API is a "hack" around their TOS. Submitter fails at reading comprehension.

I have heard similar things from other developers who think they can just throw a web app on a TV. A TV is an appliance and Panasonic only make high end ones, so they demand quality and reliability. They also require compatibility over a number of devices with a number of different user input devices. Many devs seem clueless to these requirements.

Vanilla.js [vanilla-js.com]. Have a look over their jQuery/Vanilla-JS comparison examples and consider if you really want jQuery.
At a glance:

Vanilla JS is a fast, lightweight, cross-platform framework for building incredible, powerful JavaScript applications.
...
Vanilla JS makes everything an object, which is very convenient for OO JS applications.
Native support for HTML5 and other cutting-edge technologies makes me keep coming back to Vanilla JS, time after time.
Vanilla JS is the lowest-overhead, most comprehensive framework I've ever used.

Lolwut? You do understand that jquery is just a set of helper libraries written in...Javascript...right? It's not a 'core' language because it's not a language _or_ an 'extension' - it's a library of code.

There's no issue of browsers 'supporting' it, it's more an issue of it supporting any given browser and its eccentricities, which _you_ as a Javascript developer would need to do anyway.

Would you be happier if these non-"script kiddie" (lol) developers just pasted the jQuery code in their own files, does

Hell no, we knew that for several months. What we learned today is that they're planning to promote the beta despite several months of people telling them it sucks. This is what annoys me even more than the bad design - they actually solicited our feedback, and we took the time to give it, then they completely ignored it.

Comments about how beta sucks, repeating "FUCK BETA" and... Fuck Beta.I see no point discussing about anything else until they kill that abomination or just let us to continue using the classic interface.

Interestingly enough, they've also removed all/most of the fuckbeta [slashdot.org] tags that had been put on 20+ stories earlier. It looks like most other variations such as "betasucks" have also been removed.

Remember when tags used to be an open and fun way for the community to micro-comment on a story? 90% of readers here realized that Slashdot's tags were completely and utterly useless (they still haven't dumped the pointless story [slashdot.org] tag**), so using them as a platform for humor or community feedback was both clever and fun. Oh, yeah, all that was before abortion that is Dicedot.

Fuck beta.

** Wow, that page is screwed up. Not only did it take almost a minute to load for me (what the hell are you guys running these newage bullshit pages on, Ruby?), but after all that it only displayed about 50 links, and most of them are duplicates (dupes, on MY Slashdot!? Inconceivable!!).

Fully agree. Every single time there asked my view of the beta I tell them that is a hug vast of time for them and a hug vast of screen space for me. Uniform white pixels yield no information to me and force to scroll a lot more than with the classic interface. There wast the horizontal space by cutting them. There vast the vertical space with a top menu and insane high interline and bigger fonts. Finally there lost the "personality" of the Slashdot look by replacing it by a fade look that is like a newbie

I tried to post a comment on beta the other day. I wanted to be a coward, but there was no check box. So in trying to find a convenient way without logging out, I ended up back on the front page without the comment I already wrote, and the back button on the browser was even disabled. How the hell did that happen? Fuck beta.

The beta doesn't add any useful new features. All it does is remove them and severely fucks up the best part of this site: the commenting and moderation system. If the commenting system goes out the window, why would I come here? The stories are always several days or a week old, the editors are terrible at their job, and all of the actual articles are on other sites I could browse instead.

We didn't learn that today. We've known that since October 1, 2013 [slashdot.org].

1191 posts, (no, Beta, I won't click "more posts" a million times to read the entire thread, I'll just leave), nearly universal negative feedback, a bounce rate that must be in the 90%+ range (the other 10% being people who don't know how to turn it off), and despite having helped document the UX failures of Unity and Windows 8, Dice continues to double down on its own UX fai

Like a lot of the new UI changes lately, (First rev of KDE4, Win8, Gnome3, Unity) it makes the things I do often more difficult or imposable, and makes nothing I do often easier. "It is a beautiful new hammer, and we removed the head to streamline it."

Where I work, there is an entire group of people, whose sole task is communicating with Apple's app-reviewers. Any time a new app is submitted, they even include a list of reasons, that led to another app of ours getting rejected earlier — with the explanations on why each of those reasons was invalid.

Not that this makes either Panasonic or Apple 'better' in any way; but what strikes me as insane is that Panasonic would feel that they are in the position to be all fiddly and demanding about 'apps' submitted for their 'smart TV' platform.

Apple, as obnoxious as their control freakery has always been, undeniably have a walled garden that people would fight like dogs to get their applications into. Their position, in terms of platform ownership, is unbelievably enviable. They can be dicks all they like; because what are you going to do about it?

Panasonic? One of the largely-interchangeable makers of perfectly adequate but not thrilling TVs, pretty much every last one of which has a shitty 'smart TV' platform, all braindead in somewhat different and incompatible ways? What kind of leverage do they think they have?

They don't want millions of shitty apps. Panasonic are not trying to build a giant 50" tablet. They don't need 197 cracked screen and 593 torch apps for their TVs. They want quality apps that add useful features like the ability to watch YouTube/iPlayer/Netflix. Maybe a few games, but it's mostly video. They have a rather good Skype app too.

They don't want shovelware. They don't want apps that break after a year or two because some vital service went away or the developer can't be bothered to update their h

There are too many programmers who don't think that way. They'd rather include huge libraries, than write a few lines of code.

It is their (Panasonic's) platform. If they don't want jQuery, don't use jQuery. That seems simple enough.

I've had headaches where I had to put on some dev's code, that required a massive number of libraries. They didn't mind, because their dev machine had them all. They usually can't even say what libraries are really required, it's a game of "lets figure out why their app doesn't work."

I'm logged into one server in particular. One app, 39 different libraries had to be added in addition to the standard libraries included on the system. Some of those would be redundant, except they "wrote" their code with snippets from various places online that seem to do what they want. If you go back and ask what some of them do, they can't even really explain them.

So, your alternative is to write all the code yourself? Where do you draw the line? "Standard" libraries? Who defines standard, and for what? As a note, this is why libraries were made - lots of commonly used functions of a particular nature kept in one place - not for some threshold that I have to use before it's acceptable. Just how many calls to math.h do I have to make before it's alright to include it instead of hand-coding it myself?

I think we're about on the same page. I use libraries as needed. If I can use one library to do 4 functions well, I won't use 4 different libraries to half-ass it because I found code in a forum post somewhere, and didn't want to think beyond "hey, lets copy & paste this in!" I won't include a library to save myself 3 (or 10) lines of code that I could put into my own function. On occasion, where I only needed a few lines of a huge library, I copy it (license permitting, of course), and note where and why I got it.

He didn't give us a lot to go on for this argument. He was doing something. He wanted to use jQuery. Panasonic said "no". He's complaining that they refused it. It wasn't even clear if he included jQuery with his code, or if he was calling it from Google or elsewhere. (i.e., <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.10.2/jquery.min.js">) Including it with the code guarantees it won't get updated, ever. Calling it from elsewhere means that the TV must have Internet access to operate that function, which can't be guaranteed. You could quite literally have a bunch of apps, all using different versions of jQuery, wasting memory or storage space, when the functions could have been done in a few lines each, or it may have been unnecessary and leftover from during the dev cycle and never cleaned up.

What happens if next year Google decides not to host jQuery, or say all the pre 2.x versions. It could go the way of all those lovely Google Maps API sites that were v1 and many v2 sites. It's less than idea to force users to update. Users are dumb. That makes a support nightmare for them, for reasons the users simply won't understand.

If his code was very needy of the jQuery library, I could see it as being reasonable, but we can only guess. I know there's lots of cool stuff that can be done with it. I've only done some.:)

I wonder if/. Is trying to put out a story that will attract actual answers, given that 90% of all the comments in the community today have been about the bloat of beta.slashdot.org instead of the topic presented in the summary.

As for the actual topic:

What are the reasons, other than time and it's associated costs, for not wanting to do without a javascript binary, just so you can use JQuery? It's been a trend I have been seeing lately with embedded devices (like TVs) being treated like they were desktop computers with gobs and gobs of resources to blow, and where deploying a large multipurpose binary for a single (or small number of) function(s) is commonplace.

Throwing a big multipurpose library in there can pose a significant security risk (from the company's PoV anyway) because the library can do much more than just handle the small number of things you want it to, and some of those things can be undesirable.

Other than the costs to time, what are your reasons for wanting to use a multipurpose javascript engine for such a narrow scope?

The "time to develop being as close to zero as possible" thing is only looking at one part of the productivity/profitability angle.

If, for instance, your HTML5 app is able to be co-opted into doing very scary things by feeding it strange inputs for the plex server address, or by using some hack to send it instructions that make it improperly call additional functions in the script library (yes, I know javascript is sandboxed) then the developed application can suddenly be used in more sophisticated hacks, d

On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design.

Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.

If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this [slashdot.org] in a new tab. After seeing that, click here [slashdot.org] to return to classic Slashdot.

I propose that we boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.

Hear hear. I've gone back to Classic and I'm afraid to look at Beta in case I can't return. I like being able to see at a glance if anyone has replied to my comments and what score I got for them. Couldn't do that in Beta last time I looked. In fact I found it almost impossible to find my comments, it's as if my comments were lost.

I believe he cited a number of points including the reduction in data density and the disregard for tradition in both form and function. Both points I also agree with. The beta version disregards the historical user base and its preferences in an attempt to attract non-Slashdot types.

I don't know about others, but when I get redirected to beta it tells me that I need to enable Javascript to see the comments. Granted I'm just an AC and maybe there's a hack to get around that, but I've been reading and commenting on/. since the days of Hemos and CmdrTaco and I've never had to turn on Javascript to read comments, not until this beta.

I read MacRumors, but strictly for the news. The commenting is horrible. And Ars' reporting is decent, but its commenting system isn't great either.

I read Slashdot for the comments. Slashdot has managed to hang onto a diverse group of intelligent people, and it's really the only place on the 'net where I can vehemently disagree with someone, go through a little back and forth with them, and have a reasonable expectation that at the end of our discussion, one of us (me as often as not) will come around to agree with the other person's viewpoint. It's rare that people on the Internet are actually willing to admit when they are wrong or when someone presents a compelling argument that contradicts their own, yet time and again, I've seen Slashdot users do just that, and it's what I love about the place. That, and experts in their respective fields are actually present and willing to weigh in with details and layman's explanations for those of us who may only have a passing knowledge of their field.

JQuery is a hack. A useful one, but still a hack. You should be accountable for all your production code, and there's really nothing jQuery does that you can't do yourself with only a little more effort.
http://youmightnotneedjquery.c... [youmightno...jquery.com] #incaseyoumissedit

I would have modded you flamebait since you are using a reference that contradicts your statement in the first line on the site.- "jQuery and its cousins are great, and by all means use them if it makes it easier to develop your application."http://youmightnotneedjquery.c... [youmightno...jquery.com] #incaseyoumissedit

Sadly, I'm going to be moving on from Slashdot, but I don't know of anywhere on the Net has such good discussions with such relatively intelligent people. The stories on Slashdot often suck, but the moderation moderation, I think, is what has kept it such a great place to have discussions. Is there any other site that has similar moderation?

You had the unfortunate luck of having your story picked up during the middle of the slashdot beta shitfest, so most of the comments here will be about that. My condolences. (Also: the new beta sucks.)

Explain that jquery is not a hack or a workaround. It is a framework that is itself written in -- ta da! -- 100% valid javascript. Tell them it is nothing more than a collection of well-written, consistent, standards-based, heavily-reviewed and -tested code, and all it does is contain some pre-written libraries to make it easier to do common tasks.

It is sponsored by [jquery.org] many large companies, including Wordpress, BlackBerry, Intel, Mozilla, and Adobe, to pick just the most recognizable names from that page.

You're a hero. I'd give you gold if this was reddit. And I had gold to give. I'd post anonymously and mod up, but I already commented here and I think the mod points on this comment are already maxed out.

Reading the actual email they sent, it sounds to me like they provide a (javascript) API for doing what "VieraApp" is instead doing with a direct ajax call (and jQuery vs XMLHttpRequest is not the issue; it's not using their wrapper that is the issue).

Beta is like that hot chick i met in Tijuana. I wanted to explore. I wanted to experiment. Most importantly, i wanted all of my friends know what i had within my grasp! Now that i've gotten home, i'm afraid Beta infecting myself + world + dog.

It's like they realize that it's some sort of punishment, too. First, they inflicted it on the ACs, now they're redirecting logged in users. I payed them cold hard cash (which I'm regretting now) and as a subscriber they haven't started redirecting me, yet. When they do, I'm out.

That is a great point. I have been a subscriber for ages (and browse at "-1, raw and uncut" because I must suffer from some rare form of masochism). The static snapshot you get with the "old" comments is oddly peaceful when compared to dynamically updating poo and "click to read more" links.

I've been a Slashdot user since 2007. My username is JoshuaZ ID# 1134087. I strongly dislike the beta version. The large default font makes less on a page at any given time. The comment handling is inferior and is harder to follow. It makes it much harder to just see upvoted comments instead subjecting us to the entire thread. I don't want a choice between "all" and insightful, informative or funny. I want an option to just see the more upvoted comments with the other comments still there with their subject lines so I can then decide based on that if they are worth looking into.

The userpage interfact and display is also lacking. The new version of the achievement display is strictly inferior since it doesn't show when things happened or give any information about the achievements instead giving cutesy graphics that tell nothing about what an achievement is for. Even knowing what achievements are common, I had to use the inspect element feature on my browser to figure out which is which. Comments in the user page also don't show how much they have been upvoted or downvoted nor do they give their description of how they've been modded. There's also no way to just go directly from a comment on the userpage to the comment on the article page, but instead the link takes one directly to the top of the article. This means that if one wants to find the context of a comment one needs to go to the main article and then search for the comment itself. This is inconvenient.

Overall, beta has many minor inconveniences. Any of these by itself would be minor but the totality is highly unpleasant. All of these should be fixed.

Now that I've had even more experience with beta I'd have other fun things to add to that email. I'm not optimistic that any of this feedback is going to be listened to.

If a large population likes it the way it is, that is valid feedback. It means don't change.

It's possible that/.'s new overlords have thought of that and don't want the current population anymore.Maybe the format change is a way to push us luddites out./And whose bright idea was it to strip almost all the Green out of beta?

I'm not a designer and they aren't paying me to try to do design. The only issue I brought up which was primarily a pictorial issue was the achievements display which has two such obvious solutions that they shouldn't need to be stated: 1) having the achievement information appear when you mouse over it 2) just use freaking text. Incidentally, the use of extra graphics over text is a really strange thing given that we live in an era of mobile devices.

It doesn't require detailed feedback to say that one should use a smaller default font. And asking that you have an option when you click on a comment from a userpage to actually go to the comment is so basic that I shouldn't need any special issue. Thank you for pointing out the typo in "interfact." if they aren't listening to people because of typos in feedback they aren't going to be listening to much at all.

Do you write these letters to all the sites you visit?

No. But I do write a letter when it is a website that I like and to which I actively contribute and where they've *asked for my feedback*.

What is being hacked? What exploit is required to make jQuery.js operate? How does it modify the javascript language to work?

jQuery.js is just a library of script routines designed to make a javascript programmer's life easier, like every other library out there, whether it's for C++, ActionScript, C# or assembler. It's not a binary... it is a collection of javascript functions.

Calling it a hack seems a bit ignorant of what hacks are. I've written hacks... patched XBox XDK libraries so I could get my Media X Menu to access extra hard drives in the system... interrupt routines loaded from DATA statements on my old C=64 that allowed me to display more sprites on screen than the hardware was supposed to display, or to do cool things with the borders. I've written multi-tasking kernels with assembler interspersed with the C code so I could directly access or manipulate hardware in embedded systems. Those are hacks.

At worst, you might call jQuery.js a kluge... but even then, jQuery.js works pretty well and doesn't require you to jump through hoops when making small changes (which kluges tend to do)....so it's a library. A handy collection of useful routines developers can leverage so they do not have to write all that code again. Nothing more.

The contemporary usage of JavaScript is in and of itself a hack. The language was never scoped to solve the problems it is presently being applied to. JavaScript has been leveraged to accomplish some pretty amazing feats, but that doesn't change the nature of how the language is being abused and contorted to accomplish them.

Inline it (jQuery).When they ask how it communicates, tell them how, not what functions/callbacks you use in your code.Ex. The server communicates using the standard Plex web API (or whatever it's called), documented _here_. The RCP calls are made using the standard XMLHttpRequest, with wrappers to ensure compatibility with the evolving web browser landscape. yada yada yada.

I'm sure it's a PITA, but I get the feeling the submitter said too much - explaining how jQuery internals work is going to seem like an over complicated nightmare. If they specifically ask about that weird looking "$.ajax" stuff, just tell them it is a simple wrapper that compensates for the subtle differences in XMLHttpRequest implementations. If the code finally gets to someone that can read it, they'll probably be quite familiar with jQuery and quite happy you are using it than some custom cobbled together hack:-)

But jquery has been in industry wide use for years and is no "a hack".

Check out the code, it's amazing that it works at all. That should come as no surprise to you as it should be pretty obvious by now that Resig doesn't even have a superficial understanding of javascript. (As evidence, in addition to jQuery, I would also like to submit jStat and any of his books.)

Yeah, jQuery is a hack -- and an ugly, inconsistent, and unstable one at that! Only in the software industry could a library written for people who don't know the language by someone who knows even less about the language become so successful.

RTFM - they didn't say jQuery is a hack, they said "using jQuery (or plain xmlHttpRequest) to workaround their own API that they mandate you use to access their servers (as part of their TOS)" is a hack.